Our next season gets underway with a visit to Manchester on 18/20 September for a long weekend of golf, rackets and real tennis, with Geoff Heap as our local host and with a triangular tennis match planned including Seacourt who are also visiting that weekend from Hayling Island. We then have our West Country tour on 20/22 November under Will Chawner, playing at Canford, The Hyde at Bridport and Bristol & Bath. This will be followed by Petworth on Sunday 6 December (Charles Fuente); Holyport on Sunday 17 January (Chris Gook); Old Sennockians at Queen’s on Tuesday evening 9 February (Richard Dalzell); Queen’s on Friday evening 26 February (Ian Fuller) and the Hurlingham Pigeons at Hardwick on Sunday 21 March (Richard Dalzell). The Old Boys tournament for the Henry Leaf Cup will be played at Leamington on 17/18 April and our own handicap doubles competition at Hardwick on Sunday 16 May. We may also be invited to enter a pair or two into the Polaris Cup which is to be played at Holyport over two days at the end of May.
A particularly pleasing feature of last season was the number of younger OTs coming forward to play: we have had around ten who are under 30 turning up for Will Chawner’s monthly club evenings at Queen’s and/or playing in our matches and competitions. To further encourage the younger OTs, we are able to offer free initial membership of the Tennis & Rackets Association for students, which includes two free lessons with a professional.
As many of you will already know, we now have some very smart OT Real Tennis shirts which have a multi-colour boar’s head motif over crossed racquets; these are available for purchase at a price of £25 plus packing and postage – shirt sizes in stock are L, XL and XXL.
Those who would like to play in any of our matches should make contact with the relevant match manager, as attached, without waiting to be asked. All matches are played on a handicap basis, as necessary, singles and/or doubles, and we would hope to be able to accommodate anyone who wishes to play who has an official handicap, subject obviously to the opposition’s ability to find players of an approximately similar standard.